Thursday, May 10, 2012

baseball-reference.com math: confusing, convoluted, elitist.

You really need to read about WAR 2.0 for yourself. There’s a lot to it and Sean Forman and his staff at baseball-reference.com are to be commended for making a real attempt to explain WAR to it’s subscribers.

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But I have some suggestions.

1. Parenthesis. Many equations seem to lack parenthesis that would make them correct.
2. One equal sign per equation.
3. No greater than sign in an equation.
4. Define terms in each document.
5. Explain everything.

There's a tendency to explain relatively easy stuff at 5mph and then the complex stuff at 100 mph. Leaving the reader with that "what the heck?" feeling.

The change from oWAR and dWAR to ndWAR and dWAR is confusing folks, so I'm making an additional change.

dWAR was confusing to begin with since I think it dealt with fielding. Defense to me is fielding and pitching. Why isn't it fWAR, f for fielding?

ndWAR, I guess is non-defense WAR?

afWAR => Average-Fielding-WAR.

This is a definite "Say what?". What's with the greater than sign? And what the heck is to the right of that? Are those dashes? Subtraction signs? And what does fielding have to do with what very recently had been oWAR, offensive Wins Above Replacement?

afWAR = batting + baserunning + DP's + replacement + position

I'm guessing that the word position means that players are compared to other players at their same position but I still don't see the fielding in the term Average-Fielding.

afWAR + dWAR does not equal WAR as you'll be double counting the position adjustment.

An equation might explain it but not that equation. Why are there two equal signs?

Pythagorean win-loss records

I happen to know this one but a link or simple explanation should be included. Same with PythagenPat. Come on, give the average fan a fighting chance.

Data Coverage: This link is useful except the headings disappear as you page down and baseball-reference didn't even have the sense to repeat them at the bottom, which would have helped somewhat. Those helpful popup definitions that are elsewhere on baseball-reference.com are missing here.

we also exclude IBB's from the count of BB's. Our view (and those of the creators of these stats) is that SH and IBB's are managerial decisions, and in general the best way to handle these is to exclude them from the rate stat (wOBA)

I don't get excluding IBB. The team derives the same benefit as a regular BB but it's a minor point.